At the beginning of this year life was proving majorly stressful. We had to move out of where we were staying really suddenly with no notice, and relocate to somewhere that was absolutely tiny (we’re talking two rooms and a bathroom basically) with all of our stuff and no parking. With a toddler. And a dog.

It was chaos.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so completely stressed out in my life. I generally resist change and love a settled routine. It felt like there was nothing I could cling to that grounded me – like I was in a free fall spiral. Weirdest feeling. Not pleasant. Like if one more thing went wrong, I would crack. So I joined a gym.

I am generally a gym’s dream member. I regularly sign up, pay my monthly fee on time every month, and then never ever go. And sadly it has proved thus this time as well. But for a few weeks/months I did use it and I really really needed it. Mostly I’d just go and do 30 minutes of yoga on a mat in the corner. It was the only place I felt I could escape and regain some control.

So yeah. Now I’m focused on my money goal (eliminate my debt), that monthly fee really hurts me. It’s like a kick in the teeth each time. But it’s hard to regret my decision to sign up – it was a complete lifeline at the time and allowed me to cope.

Anyway – that was a whole rambling intro to what I actually wanted to say and that is, that dealing with your personal finances takes commitment. A bit like the gym. The more you work at it, the easier it gets. It becomes a habit and then you can think about it less.

The other side to this is that it can also be really easy to fall off the wagon. To become complacent.

I’m thinking about this today because it’s nearly payday 💰💰💰 (tomorrow – yay!) and I find that my steely resolve to control my money really weakens towards the end of the month.

I start off at the beginning of the month with a brand new monthly spreadsheet, and I begin by tracking my spending meticulously. But by this point of the month I’m slipping a bit. It’s like I think that this bit doesn’t count – like I’ve done so well up until now and, hey, if I’m only a little into my overdraft then that’s pretty good and it’ll all be wiped away shortly anyway when my pay cheque comes in. Cha-ching!

Bad, bad money brain. It’s the same bit of me that flakes in the face of committing to exercise. If you allow yourself to start saying it doesn’t matter – that you’ll have today off but get back on it tomorrow – then before you know it, it’s all fallen apart.

So I guess I’m saying – don’t be like me. Commit to keeping track of your progress and know that if you do start making excuses, you’re only hurting yourself. But it’s easy to get back on the wagon.

Oh – and don’t sign up for a gym membership unless you will use it. Or you really really need it.

Sorry – that came out a little more deep and meaningful than I intended.

What I mean is, when you think about your financial situation, do you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve? A financial goal?

If not, then I highly recommend sitting down and really facing up to that question. If you are in a hole of debt so deep you can’t see the sky, then I understand that it’s not easy to have that conversation with yourself. But actually, in your case the answer should be really simple: get rid of that awful black cloud in your life. Get debt free. Full stop.

If you don’t have debt then the answer might be trickier to land on. Do you want to get a deposit for a house together? Maybe you want to pay off your mortgage? Get an emergency fund sorted? Build a savings pot? Save for a special holiday? Save for ANY holiday?

It could be any number of things but I think it’s really important to settle on what it is that you want to achieve – because how else are you going to identify the steps you need to take towards it?

I once heard a saying, “if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it.” And it’s so true. If you want to achieve something, you have to aim for it first and then go headlong towards it.

For me, there have been various goals at stages in my life – including almost all of those listed above at one point or another. Today, at the moment, it’s clear the tens of thousands of pounds of debt that I’m currently in. I do have longer term goals I’d like to achieve after that, but until the debt is gone these are complete pipe dreams.

So I’ll put my head down and push towards that goal. And every decision I take should be with that goal in mind. Easy to say, not easy to do. But I’ll never achieve it if I don’t try. And neither will you.

Ok, I’m lying. Spreadsheets are not sexy – except perhaps to a really niche audience. I do not recommend bigging up your Excel skills by way of a chat up line. Not gonna work.

But spreadsheets are, nevertheless, a vital part of the money mission. To push this analogy to its limits, they are the Spanx of the money world. You need a decent robust spreadsheet underpinning everything and keeping it all together so that you can swan through life looking all sexy and money savvy. Ergo, spreadsheets are sexy.

Step one for me wrestling back control over my finances was to set myself up with a spreadsheet. Now I’m no Excel master. I’ve wrestled with many a table and graph in my time, and rarely do I win. But I’ve picked up a few tricks along the way and on a good day I can plug in a simple formula. This is helpful – it speeds things up. But it’s not vital. A calculator will do the trick too.

Basically the idea is to track your money. Some people call it a budget but actually I think that’s the next step up on the ladder. If you don’t know where the hell your money is going then there’s little point in setting unrealistic limits on what you spend. You’re just gonna blow straight through your budget without even thinking and then give up. Sadly I speak from much experience.

So step one is to track your spending. For a long time I told myself that this was pointless – I can see where the money is going from my bank statement. So why do I need to do the job of the bank and log it all separately myself? Waste-a-time.

Nope. This is your bad money brain talking. Truth is, it is nearly impossible to keep track of all your spending via your bank statement. Particularly if you are hiding from that statement at various points in the month (i.e a week before pay day, right?). Plus a statement doesn’t categorise spending so how are you gonna know just how much your coffee habit (or – because we’re millennials – avocado habit) is actually costing you a month? You might have a guesstimate in mind but chances are it’s wrong.

So: You need a spreadsheet.

There’s a ton of suggestions and pro-formas online for tracking spending which can get you started. I initially started out with one from the ‘Frugal Living’ forum on Money Saving Expert.com, but that was really aimed at setting an annual budget and didn’t really allow me to see where the cash was going each month. So I changed it and made it my own.

I set up a number of categories in columns along the top (which will be entirely personal to you) and put the days of the month down the side. Then I plugged in each item I bought. Yes – each time I bought a packet of crisps or a toy for my kid (or an avocado 🥑🥑🥑) on it went to the spreadsheet.

Now your spreadsheet has to work for you. Mine doesn’t happen to include household spending because my partner and I sort that separately, but it captures all my personal spending, which is the bit that was out of control. Obviously yours can include anything and everything you need.

And then you keep a running total of how much you’re spending in each category along the bottom. And voila – you promptly die of shock at JUST HOW BLOODY EXPENSIVE LIFE IS and that is the best realisation you will come to. Ever.

Because it is not possible to spend mindlessly when you know you have to remember how much a thing cost, in order to plug it into a spreadsheet later. And you become very aware of just how much you’ve already spent in that category this month and, who the hell knew that it all added up to so much anyway?? Jeez!

So, yeah. Spreadsheets. Track your money. Don’t worry too much about budgets just yet. It sounds a bit tedious and it is, but it also becomes mildly addictive. You start to see how you might actually get control of this situation one day and that feels great.

Just don’t expect it to be a great conversation piece at parties, that’s all.

Do you know how much is in your main current account right now, without having to look?

No? That’s ok. For a long time I didn’t either. You could put a gun to my head and I would still struggle to come up with an accurate figure of how much I had in my account at any given moment.

I could probably tell you whether or not I thought I was in my overdraft, but no more than that. I’d probably be right with that guess as well – if only that I was so often in my overdraft that my odds of being correct would be pretty good.

If this sounds like you too then you should know that I totally get it. I’ve been there. In the fight of Girl vs Money, Money was definitely winning. Properly kicking my butt. And what made it worse was that I would often actively avoid checking my account because chances were that the total would be even worse than I thought. So I wasn’t just unaware of what my account total was, I was actually hiding from it. Round 1 to Money, I think.

But not anymore. I took control of that stupid mess and started sorting it all out so that I am in control of the money rather than it controlling me. It doesn’t mean that my financial situation is suddenly sorted but it does mean I’ve made a start, which is almost half the battle (right?).

As part of this process I’ve found it really useful to read a lot of personal finance blogs. I love hearing how other people have taken up the cause and won their own battle with their cash. But a lot of the blogs I’ve read seem to be American, or talk about things like investing in bitcoin – and that doesn’t interest me so much. So I thought I’d start my own.

So welcome to my blog about a UK girl in a fight to regain control of her money and, as a result, her life, and who, honestly, has no bloody idea or interest in what ‘bitcoin’ is at all.